1. Field of Invention
On water where vessels are moored to vertical pilings to hold them off, such vessels are subject to the influence of either surge tides, wind tide or celestial tides or a combination thereof. In low celestial tide waters you can have surge tide and wind tides and even in inland locations where there is no celestial tide, there is always the possibility of surge and wind tides.
Since mankind first floated on water, there has been a problem of tying the floating means or vessel off with enough slack to allow the same to ride up and down with the tides and yet tight enough to prevent the vessel from coming into contact with the dock or pilings. The higher the anticipated tides, the more slack is required.
The farther apart the mooring pilings, the more slack can be left in the lines for greater vertical rise and fall without contacting any adjacent structure. As the cost of waterfront property has skyrocketed, mooring spaces have been reduced to a minimum for the size boat to be moored.
Spring lines, particularly adjacent docks have been used to hold boats off. This works fairly well with celestial tide conditions but cannot withstand strong surge and wind tides.
Pulleys, slides, weights and other means have been devised in attempts to prevent the boats from contacting adjacent structures where lines cannot be slackened enough to compensate for tide rise and fall.
2. Concise Explanation of Prior Art
U.S. Design Pat. No. 365,321 to John J. Kreeger is a boat mooring line attachment system for compensating for varying tides including vertical rails with a ring slidedly mounted thereon and attached to the mooring line. This system is of limited vertical distance, thus has limited application.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,401,413 to James V. Ansellmi discloses vertical rods driven into the bottom with a float having a central opening being placed on the rods. This may be fine for small runabouts in relatively calm water, but would not work for mooring heavy vessels in strong tide areas.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,430,598 to Joseph E. Soderberg discloses poles driven into the bottom with a pot-like float having a central opening that slides over the poles. Again, this would not be adequate for larger vessels in heavy tide conditions.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,342 to Stanleigh W. Aks discloses a pile mooring bumper with metal hitch rings through which mooring lines are threaded with the ends being secured to the boat fore and aft.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,265,553 to Hugh B. Brydges discloses a small boat mooring system wherein the mooring line passes through a pulley with the end thereof attached to a PVC counterweight.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,341,757 to Don A. Digiacomo discloses a mooring device including vertical cables secured to pilings with pulleys mounted thereon that are attached to mooring lines.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,727 to Gerald B. Godvin and Charles F. Kolb, Jr. discloses a pile mooring device for boats wherein the float is tied to the ring which surrounds the piling. The mooring lines go down from the deck of the boat to the float at water level.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,603,280 to Francis H. Shackelford, Jr. discloses a boat mooring system including a track mounted on a piling with a float at the bottom thereof to move the track up and down with the tide. An eyelet is secured to the mooring line.
The above discussed prior art mooring systems are either too complicated or too expensive to be of practical use. Others are not strong enough to hold large vessels that weigh thousands of pounds, particularly in fast running tides, surge tides and heavy wind tides. Other devices would tend to bind and thus become useless and could even hold the boat down or tear the cleats out because the lines go from the deck down to the device at water level.